tinkelman@ccavax.camb.com (03/02/90)
I have a question about a sendmail.cf rule. But first the background. Recently I received mail from a friend at Digital who was using a new mail system. It arrived with an illegal return address, albeit one that I, as a human, could understand. It was <uunet!decwrl!koala.enet!mrgate::add::koala::x4::graff> meaning make uucp hops to uunet and decwrl, then DECnet mail-ll to koala, then through mrgate into the message router, then to node koala (aren't we already here?), to Message Router mailbox x4, to user graff. (Simple, huh?) Despite the fact I was 99% certain that those colons would cause problems somewhere, I decided to try replying, just to see what would happen. What happened was a rejection from decwrl: > ----- Transcript of session follows ----- > 550 <koala::mrgate..add..koala..x4..graff%decwrl.dec.com>... User unknown Surprise! uunet accepted the address with those colons, passed it on to decwrl, but changed the colons into periods. It really was uunet that had made the changes. In reply to my inquiry, the postmaster at uunet said that their sendmail.cf has scattered throughout it lines like # map colons to dots everywhere..... R$*:$* $1.$2 map colons to dots I'm not a sendmail.cf expert (and I certainly don't have uunet's entire sendmail.cf in front of me to look at). I'd assume that uunet knows what they're doing. Could someone please explain it? When would the above rule make sense? -- Bob Tinkelman, Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc., 212-425-5830 bob@ccavax.camb.com or ...!uunet!ccavax!bob -- Bob Tinkelman, Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc., 212-425-5830 bob@ccavax.camb.com or ...!uunet!ccavax!bob